Permissions and Their Costs

Some years ago, I completed the manuscript for Documentation: A History and Critique of Attribution, Commentary, Glosses, Marginalia, Notes, Bibliographies, Works- Cited Lists, and Citation Indexing and Analysis (McFarland, 2008). I worked on this esoteric, scholarly monograph during a concentrated two year period. It was enjoyable to discover various and unusual forms of documentation in many languages as well as analyze and critique some of the currently popular if often illogical systems such as those abbreviated as Chicago, APA, MLA, CSE and the BlueBook. It was also much easier to create the text than to negotiate for permissions. I may, naturally, paraphrase or even briefly quote directly from a source, since this is considered a fair use of a copyright holder's material. But if I wish to physically reproduce an image such as a page of printed or hand- written text, a drawing or engraving, an illumination or rubrication, or some other physical entity, I must acquire permission to do so. One might think that since a 200- year- old book or a 700- year- old manuscript is out of copyright, I would not have to bother, but there are subtleties involved here that elude the uninitiated.If I wander into a library anywhere in the country and discover an outof- copyright volume on the shelf, I may make a photocopy of whatever I like and include it in my study. But if this same volume happens to be secreted in a special collection so that I must call for it, and then have the curators make a copy (and sometimes they insist on an expensive digital format), then I must request permission. Though this makes no sense, it seems to be the way collections (libraries, museums, societies) operate, and with good reason: it can be quite remunerative. Generally, permission is granted, though sometimes with caveats so severe that one may choose to eliminate the illustration. Of the 75 or so images that I had originally chosen for this book, I decided against some 25, for one reason or another. Of those remaining, some were in the public domain and I did not contact anyone; others were covered by copyright and I wrote for permission to use them; still others came from collections and again I made inquiry.The results of such initial queries cover a broad spectrum. Occasionally, a publisher, e.g., Dover, responded by offering immediate and free rights. Others indicated that I must fill out a sometimes complex form, recapitulating all of the germane data that I had already submitted in my concise but complete letter. This must be mailed back along with a check. Thus, Princeton University Press offered me the rights (or license) to publish two items for $75. I paid and was done. A few weeks later, I discovered that an image that I had thought could be acquired from another house belonged to Princeton, so I wrote again, and this time one of those miracles occurred, for which impecunious scholars pray: Someone replied and said I may use the third illustration without additional charge. Such pleasures are mitigated by the many cases in which one must write to one publisher only to be told to try another which responds many months later with impossible demands or does not reply at all. I wrote to Random House for permission to use some pages from the Talmud. After waiting for an inordinately long period, I wrote again and had the post office demand a signed receipt which would prove that I had indeed made inquiry. Random House then let me know that I must seek elsewhere, which I did. I never heard from this second organization. Since I had made a good faith effort to garner permission to reprint this text, one that happens to have been in the public domain for a millennium, I have the right to use it.Anyone who is familiar with permissions knows that there are certain estates that give scholars, editors, and anthologizers a very difficult time. The James Joyce estate is notorious for this. Yet, I had no trouble gaining permission, for a reasonable fee, for a few pages from Finnegans Wake as well as for two additional pages from a key to this difficult text. …